Fast Fat Loss

It may one day be possible to burn fat at super speeds. The enzyme lipase breaks down fats in the body, but researchers in Denmark recently discovered that individual molecules of the enzyme spend most of their time in a state of inactivity. "It was surprising that the enzyme's efficiency does not fluctuate. Rather, what determines its working powers is how much time it spends on or off," says Dimitrios Stamou, a professor of chemistry and nanoscience at the University of Copenhagen. The investigators then figured out how to flip lipase's energy switch to keep it turned on three times longer—45 percent of the time as opposed to 15 percent. So far, the researchers have only manipulated lipase in the laboratory, Stamou emphasizes, but they are looking for drugs that could yield similar effects in the human body.